Leaving Oz

Wildfire on campus

The phone call from my son, Hethaestus, came early Thursday evening.  "Mom, I thought you should know.  A wildfire started in the hill just above Westmont College.  It's reached campus, so everyone has been evacuated into the gymnasium. The gym is built of cinder-block; it's fire-safe.  I'm at the apartment, so I'm ten miles away, but I can see the glow from here.  Two of my roommates are still on campus, and lots of my friends.  I've been texting them--everybody seems safe."

Sickness and the Empty Nest

Okay, I thought I was dealing with the empty nest pretty well. I survived those 17 days of my daughter’s pre-college wilderness experience. That was challenging. Sequoia didn’t get to bring her computer into the wilderness. Or her cell phone. So I had a hard stop in communications. Seventeen days of silence.

I flew to Chicago the day she returned from the wilderness, and helped her move into the dorm. We caught up, shopped for necessities, hugged, cried. Okay, I cried—she was fine. We passed notes when the orientation sessions got boring. I flew home three days later and started a new job.

The Empty (but Cleaner) Nest

I have a powerful urge to clean house.  Without my teenager daughter's charisma in the house, I don't want her chaos.  So, from Day 1, I've been erasing at least the messiest reminders of her.

She was never a tidy child.  Her room was her own wild space.  Her college admissions essay told the story of "cleaning her room" with a friend, but really dumping everything in the closet and only sorting it out years later.

Partly my reasons are charitable.  In three weeks, when she returns from her wilderness experience with other freshmen, I'll join her at college for orientation.  I'm bringing her computer and printer, and have room to throw in anything really essential that she's left behind.  (And yes, some of this clutter will be passed on to Hope Services or Goodwill.)

Farewell to My College-Bound Daughter

She's gone.  I waved goodbye from behind a glass window after she cleared security, pulled her hiking boots back over her "Nightmare before Christmas" socks, and hoisted her carry-on bag onto her shoulder. Then she strolled off to Gate 25 and her future.  It was 6:15am.  My tissues were too soggy to be useful, but the diner where we'd shared breakfast had napkins to spare.  I got home in a fog, fed the cats, put in earplugs against the garbage trucks prowling the neighborhood, and went back to sleep.

Yesterday, she withdrew into herself.  She's an introvert, and gains strength from her alone time, so I wasn't alarmed.  She spent alone time in all her favorite places--our roof, our climbing tree, my room. It seemed that she was steeping herself in these special places one last time.

Car Keys and Growing Up

I knew something was different as soon as I walked into the house. My normally feisty 18-year-old daughter, Sequoia, looked up at me through her long dark lashes and said solemnly, “You were right. I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?” My mind raced through our recent conversations and settled on one in my car the previous night.

"The keys!"